Law Offices of Andrew N Cassas, PA

Law Offices of Andrew N Cassas, PA For over 35 years, the Law Offices of Andrew N. Cassas, P.A. has been assisting clients in Florida For over 25 years, the Law Office of Andrew N. Mr.

has been assisting residents of Boca Raton, FL with their legal needs. Cassas has dedicated his practice to Personal Injury, General Civil Litigation, Transactional Law & Contracts, Real Estate Law, Corporate Law and Wills & Trusts. The firm prides themselves on exceptional service, giving each client the individual attention they deserve. Andrew is very hands-on and interacts directly with each client. Call us today for your free consultation!

06/15/2026

WARNING TO CLIENTS: If clients upload confidential legal advice, litigation strategy, or privileged facts into a public AI platform, that disclosure may not be protected under attorney-client privilege.

United States v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y. 2026) is one of the first reported cases addressing whether documents created through a generative AI system are protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine. The court held that they were not protected under the facts presented.

Background

Bradley Heppner, a corporate executive facing a federal criminal investigation and later indictment for securities fraud and related offenses, used the AI chatbot Claude to analyze his legal situation and generate potential defense arguments.

Importantly:

He used Claude on his own initiative.
His lawyer did not direct or request the AI work.
He later shared the AI-generated materials with his attorney and claimed they were privileged.
The Court's Ruling
1. No Attorney-Client Privilege

The court found that the essential requirements for attorney-client privilege were missing:

Claude is not a lawyer. Communications with an AI chatbot are not communications with legal counsel.
No reasonable expectation of confidentiality. The court relied heavily on Claude's terms and privacy policies, which allowed information to be retained and potentially disclosed under certain circumstances.
No attorney-directed legal consultation. Heppner was not communicating through Claude as part of a lawyer-supervised process. Simply giving the resulting documents to his lawyer afterward did not make them privileged.
2. No Work-Product Protection

The court also rejected protection under the work-product doctrine because:

The documents were not prepared by counsel.
They were not created at counsel's direction.
Although the documents later influenced defense strategy, they did not reflect counsel's mental impressions when they were created.
The Court's Broader Message

The court emphasized that AI does not create a new legal exception:

The novelty of AI does not exempt it from traditional legal rules.

Courts will continue to apply established concepts such as:

confidentiality,
attorney involvement,
waiver,
agency relationships, and
work-product requirements.
Practical Implications
Clients should not assume AI conversations are privileged

Talking to a public AI system about a legal matter is generally not the same as talking to a lawyer.

Entering attorney advice into AI may risk waiver

If clients upload confidential legal advice, litigation strategy, or privileged facts into a public AI platform, a court may treat that disclosure as sharing information with a third party.

Law firms need AI policies

The decision encourages firms to:

educate clients about AI risks,
prohibit uploading privileged materials into public AI systems,
address AI use in engagement letters, and
evaluate enterprise AI tools with stronger confidentiality protections.
AI prompts and outputs may be discoverable

The ruling suggests that AI chat logs, prompts, and generated reports could become discoverable evidence in litigation or investigations.

What the Case Did Not Decide

The decision's reach is narrower than some headlines suggest. The court did not decide whether privilege or work-product protection might apply when:

lawyers themselves use AI as a drafting or research tool,
AI is used under attorney supervision,
an AI platform has stronger contractual confidentiality protections, or
AI functions as an agent of counsel in a carefully structured arrangement.
Bottom Line

The key takeaway is not that "AI-generated documents are never privileged." Rather, the case holds that traditional privilege rules still govern AI use. Under the facts of Heppner—use of a public AI tool by a client acting independently, without attorney direction, and without assured confidentiality—the AI-generated materials were not protected and could be obtained by the government.

For now, lawyers and clients should assume that information entered into consumer AI systems may later be discoverable unless there is a strong, legally supported basis for protection.

05/26/2026

In 2021 the company ordered all employees to receive a COVID-19 shot without any exemptions.

03/25/2026

‘Ministry of Truth’ Case Ends With 10-Year Ban on Government Censorship
The Trump administration has settled Missouri v. Biden, a lawsuit against 'the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history'
Yudi Sherman
Mar 25, 2026



A major legal battle over government censorship came to a close Tuesday, with the Trump administration agreeing to a decade-long ban on key federal agencies pressuring social media companies to suppress lawful speech.
The agreement, which concludes the long-running case known as Missouri v. Biden, prohibits the Surgeon General’s office, the CDC, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) from pressuring social media companies — through legal, regulatory, or economic means — to remove constitutionally protected speech for the next ten years.
According to journalist Justin Hart, the settlement also takes direct aim at the language federal agencies had used to justify their interventions. “The Parties agree that government, politicians, media, academics, or anyone else applying labels such as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ or ‘malinformation’ to speech does not render it constitutionally unprotected,” the consent decree states.
The case was first brought in 2023 after it became evident that the White House and agencies including CISA and the FBI had been working hand-in-glove with social media platforms to suppress certain viewpoints — among them skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines, questions about the lab-leak theory, claims about the Hunter Biden laptop, and challenges to the integrity of the 2020 election. Evidence also showed that officials had sought to extend their reach to Americans’ private WhatsApp messages about COVID vaccines, and that censorship efforts extended to topics including gender ideology, climate policy, abortion, gas prices, and even mockery of Joe Biden.
At one point during litigation, the FBI argued that its roughly 50% success rate in getting content taken down was itself proof it wasn’t “coercing” anyone — an argument that struggled to land with the courts.
In a July 4, 2023 ruling, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty granted an injunction against the Biden administration. He delivered a blistering assessment, writing that the U.S. government appeared to have taken on a role “similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’” and may have engineered “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” He was equally pointed about whose speech had been targeted: “It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech.”
A Fifth Circuit appeals court upheld that ruling, but the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately reversed it on standing grounds. The Court held that the remaining plaintiffs couldn’t demonstrate sufficient personal injury to support a preliminary injunction. The case returned to the district level, and negotiations ultimately produced Tuesday’s consent decree.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was among the original plaintiffs and is now director of the National Institutes of Health, was required to switch to the government’s side of the case after his appointment. He reacted to the settlement Tuesday by celebrating his “loss.”
“Huzzah! The consent decree in Missouri v. Biden is a historic victory for free speech in the US,” he wrote on X. “Though I had to switch to the government side in the case after I became NIH director, I’ve never been more pleased by ‘losing’ in my life. A huge win for all Americans.”
The settlement echoes an executive order President Trump signed in January, which declared that the federal government under the Biden administration had “infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.”
The consent decree’s ten-year horizon means the restrictions will outlast the current administration — a feature that transforms what could have been a policy position into an enforceable legal commitment.

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